The Tudors: The Complete Third Season

In this lusty British/American co-production made for Showtime, Jonathan Rhys Meyers is a robust, virile, hearty young King Henry VIII, with a zest for life, power, and women. The 2009 eight-episode third season finds Henry working his way through wives three and four: Jane Seymour (Anita Briem), who dies in childbirth, and Anne of Cleves (Joss Stone), an unsophisticated German aristocrat to whom he is betrothed sight unseen and from whom he is divorced with the marriage unconsummated (Henry never forgives the matchmaker, but at least Anne comes out of the union alive). Of course, there are also various mistresses along the way, but while the show's advertising constantly sells the sex, the focus here is really more on power and politics—the jockeying for influence and behind-the-scenes scheming to keep Henry's favor, the treaties and royal marriages engineered for European alliances, and the increasingly tense relationship between the monarchy and the Vatican, which wields a strong countervailing power until Henry makes himself head of the Church of England and brings the country to the verge of civil war. More royal melodrama than historical drama, The Tudors is nevertheless an entertaining slice of British history with plenty of intrigue. DVD extras include a featurette on the historical timeline of the narrative. Recommended, overall. (S. Axmaker)